Barrayar's Father
by Nel
Summary: Cryoburn Spoilers. Nikki Vorsoisson Vorkosigan reflects on the death of a family member.


Barrayar's Father

Nikki folded his long limbs as he lowered himself to the floor of one of the guest rooms, holding one of the toy jumpships his step-grandfather, the legendary Aral Vorkosigan, had given him for his birthday not long after Miles had wed his mother. He bumped his head on a low shelf as he plopped down, cursed colorfully with words his mother would certainly not approve of, and rubbed the forming goose egg. He'd had another recent growth spurt, and had bumped his head on unexpectedly low shelves and overhangs more than once this week. He looked at the little model jumpship, an exact replica of the _General Vorkraft_, the ship grandpa Aral had been in command of when he'd met grandma Cordelia, and brushed away tears.

It wasn't that Nikki was in want of family members. Technically speaking, he still had two half-sets, plus numerous aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles, cousins, and all of his adoptive family as well. He was miserable enough for the loss of a man he had loved quite a bit, despite his long absences; but mostly he was miserable for everybody else. With all the various guests engulfed by old Vorkosigan house, and with his parents taken up with various funeral and political responsibilities, he had to hide just to escape being asked by one of the harried staff members to keep an eye on one of his little half-siblings. Besides, all the sad people crammed together made for a seriously contagious depression. Nikki wasn't sure where his family's emotions ended and his began.

Grandpa Aral had been a great man. Although much of his career was still considered classified, between Aral's not-so-oblique hints, pieces of conversation overheard between the Koudelkas and Simon, and his own not-quite-allowed snooping into the records, he had painted quite a picture of the man. His career had begun at the ripe old age of eleven, when his mother and brother were killed and he was thrown into a violent revolution as his father's right hand man-boy. It had been marked by a mysterious incident in which his first wife had died, and was exceptional until the event known as the Solstice Massacre, where he had gained the unfortunate moniker The Butcher of Komarr. That was the Aral Vorkosigan that Nikki had heard of in legend here and there while living on Komarr. His first solo visit with the man had been terribly daunting without his mother or Miles as a buffer, but he had walked away with his model _General Vorkraft_ and a smile, and Nikki had been endeared to him since.

His career had been long and varied, and probably exhausting, and he had doubtless been napping before some meeting or another the afternoon of his death. Nikki thought it was one hell of a way to get out of a meeting, but effective. Nikki knew he would be daunted by it all, anyway. Others sure seemed to be daunted by him—at least those who didn't know him. He was powerful, decisive, vigorous, and had the weight of history behind him enough to crush a man. But to those who were his, Aral Vorkosigan had been warm, friendly, loving, stern but always with a purpose.

He mostly felt bad for Miles. For Mark, too, but it wasn't really the same. Miles had known the man his whole life, and Mark had been a late son, only meeting the man after he'd been an adult (or something like it) for some years. But Miles had seen the man at his best and worst. The man had doubtless treated Miles very much how Miles treated Nikki, teaching him interesting things, giving him a pat on the shoulder when he felt rotten, or a kick in the butt when he felt rebellious. Miles, it seemed to Nikki, had always been trying to prove something to his legend of a father, even if the little man didn't know it. Well, that was over with. Or maybe it wasn't. Miles had walked through the various ceremonies like somebody had taken his brain out and put it in backwards. He had politely dealt with the guests, and Nikki had seen the pain and anger flood his face so suddenly it looked like an explosion behind his eyes. He had watched him sneak off to the bathroom and come back red faced and bleary eyed.

Nikki sniffed and wiped his eyes again. His mother would have told him he was such a sweet, sensitive boy. Nikki just thought he was too good at thinking about how other people feel. It didn't hurt that he was quite familiar with the pain of losing a father, though his own had been far less impressive a man, in retrospect, than Viceroy-Regent-Admiral-Count Aral Vorkosigan.

The door to the little guest room banged open and Nikki jumped, hitting his head on the shelf again and biting back a loud scream of rage. He was half tempted to grab the stupid shelf, tear it off the wall, and throw it out the window. Instead he shrunk back, not really sure why, and waited for whoever had intruded upon his moment of silence to go away. Unfortunately, heavy, awkward footsteps stomped into the room instead of out, and the door creaked shut none-too-quietly. The intruder set down something glass—a cup or a bottle—on the desk and stilled, leaning over with hunched shoulders. Nikki rustled deliberately, hoping to alert the man to his presence without scaring the crap out of him. Nikki had learned early that it was a bad idea to sneak up on a soldier.

The man turned around so Nikki could see his face, and he felt inexplicably angry to see Miles' cousin Ivan.

"Nikki?" he turned and leaned against the desk, wobbled, and settled for straddling the chair. "What are you doing in here?"

"I was trying to get away from all the noise," he frowned. It wasn't that he didn't like Ivan, but it seemed that everybody was always exasperated with him, and the affect was easy to pick up. He was mostly annoyed at being interrupted and just wanted the man to go away.

"Yeah, me too," he said, apparently not getting the hint. Upon closer inspection, something seemed a bit off about Ivan. Something was, understandably, off about almost everybody in Vorkosigan House lately, but he suspected that this 'off' had more to do with the vodka in his hand than his grief.

"Aren't you on duty?" he unfolded himself and approached his older non-relative, still dressed in military dress greens. Oddly, he thought he was almost Ivan's height by now. Strange realization to have at a time like this. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the man was hunched over on himself, looking more drunk and shrunken than Nikki had ever seen him. And he had seen Ivan plenty drunk before.

"Not anymore. My mother asked me to stop by to check in on Auntie Cordelia on my way home."

"And that's why you're hiding in a guest room with a fifth of vodka?"

"Wouldn't you be?" Ivan asked earnestly.

Nikki sat down on the bed across from him and examined the man. He was dapper as ever, even blotto. His brown hair had a touch of gray at the temples, which on him, just looked charming. He had slight laugh lines around the corners of his eyes. His dry lips were slightly parted, and his brown eyes darted to the alcohol on the desk. Nikki solved his dilemma by grabbing the bottle and taking a swig before handing it to his cousin-uncle-whatever Ivan was to him.

"When did you start drinking? Aren't you like thirteen?" Ivan snatched the bottle warily, looking like he thought he would get into trouble for it.

"I'm sixteen," he tried not to roll his eyes.

"Oh, yeah, I guess so. It's pretty weird, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Time, you know. You're almost an adult, I'm almost an adult," he laughed a little at this, but something in it was pained. "And Aral Vorkosigan is dead."

"I feel bad for Miles," Nikki said plaintively, kicking around the lint on the carpet.

"Did you know this used to be Miles' bedroom?" Ivan asked. "A long time ago, we sat in this room and got very drunk after his grandfather passed away. I guess the tradition continues."

"So is that what you're doing now? Getting drunk to forget, or something?"

"Or something," he mumbled, taking a long drag on the bottle and letting it hang between his long fingers. "I feel bad for Miles too. Worse for myself, though."

Nikki flushed with anger. How selfish could the man be? Sure, it wasn't fun to have people randomly coming up to you and crying—his mom had done that just yesterday, only for about two breaths before she controlled herself, but still—but it was way worse for his wife and son than Ivan could understand.

"He was kind of my father, too, and Gregor's, you know. My father died the day I was born. Uncle Aral was the only father I knew. My father was his only relative from their generation, so I think he felt kind of responsible . . . I spent most of my childhood here, or at Vorkosigan Surleau playing with Miles and Elena—that was Miles' bodyguard's daughter. She went off to be a space mercenary. Bet she has more kids by now." He sighed and scrubbed his face with one hand. "I kind of feared him, and he was always hard on me, but only because I needed it. He was always softer on Gregor, though," he chuckled.

"I'm sorry," Nikki spoke quietly. He hadn't realized grandpa Aral had been so important to so many people, despite the parade of mourners.

"Yeah, well, you can't really understand. I'm sure it's rough to be around all the mourners, and worse the non-mourners."

"I can understand fine, thank you," he frowned.

Ivan seemed to suddenly remember that Nikki's own father had been murdered, accidentally, no less, in the prime of his life. Nikki had mixed feelings about the man now, and couldn't exactly regret Miles' presence in his life, but at the time it had sure felt like the end of the world.

"Sorry," Ivan mumbled and drank. "Sometimes I think Uncle Aral was kind of that father of this whole planet. He was regent here, viceroy on Sergyar, one of the key players in the colonization of Komarr, involved in the major political events for about three-quarters of a century. Lots of people thought of him that way. I know Illyan saw him that way, and Koudelka, if not as a father, at least as a mentor. Miles, me, Mark, Elena, Gregor. . . He adopted us like an animal lover picking up stray kittens. And rather than feeding us on scraps, he fed us on all the hard-learned lessons he had over the years, sharing his experience while still allowing us to grow on our own."

"It was one of his gifts," Nikki said quietly. "Personnel selection. Like Miles. He never treated me like a dumb kid. He treated me like the beginning of what he knew I'd be. I didn't know him well, but I knew that much about him."

"Yeah," Ivan sighed and scrubbed his eyes suspiciously. "Makes me wonder if I'll ever make that much of a difference. Who can claim to have influenced one planet, let alone three, or however many he influenced in his political dealings with places like Pol or Cetaganda or Escobar? What the hell have I done? By my age he had fought in two wars, helped dethrone a tyrant and place a new emperor, and colonized Komarr."

"He didn't do those things all by himself, did he?" Nikki said uncomfortable. It seemed like he had, based on how everybody was talking about him lately.

"Damn near it," he spat. His broad shoulders slumped. "Maybe not. I don't know. But what have I done? Served damn near twenty years in the military and done basically nothing. Miles has saved worlds. His father saved worlds. I'm almost forty."

Nikki smiled a little. Not too long ago, he would have thought that was almost dead. He frowned at the thought. Forty wasn't, but eighty-something sure was as dead as dead for Aral Vorkosigan. "At least you haven't un-done anything."

"What do you mean?"

"A lot of people go through their lives and do nothing, but at least they don't mess anything up. People like grandpa Aral and Miles have too much responsibility. Worlds can end, people can die, at their word. Could. Did. Like Komarr. Even if it wasn't on purpose, and that weighs. I'd rather be a nobody that didn't really screw anything up than a somebody with the chance to do that."

"I do like to fly under the radar," Ivan's voice was suddenly shrewed. He looked at Nikki cockeyed and smiled, or smirked, slightly. "Take it from me, kid, that sounds like a great idea on paper, but not so much in action. Not when you know you can do more. Uncle Aral always told me I could do more."

Nikki looked at Ivan's drink-reddened face.

"I'm almost forty," he said again. "Maybe I should grow the hell up. I guess it's a good thing I didn't before. If he hadn't died then, he sure would have died at the sight of that spectacle."

Ivan pushed himself up with an effort, looking none too steady, and Nikki wondered if he shouldn't help him off somewhere to sleep off the booze, but he steadied himself and made for the door. He departed with a little wave. The bottle of vodka sat on the desk. Nikki took another swig and laid back on the bed. He stared at the ceiling for a long time, not sure there was much else to do. Time was still moving, even though it felt like it had both stopped and lurched these last days. People would be returning to work, he to school, things would march on and on.

That was something that grandpa Aral always seemed to know. He didn't stop, he didn't wait, because if there was no tomorrow, and there were still things to do, who would do them? He snatched all his moments, used them to grow and nurture all those people. Despite his depression, Nikki thought Ivan hadn't done too bad for himself. He'd made a decent rank for his age, been involved in a few important political tussles (which Nikki had heard about vaguely from various people), and had kept himself out of trouble, not to mention stayed alive. He thought that grandpa Aral was probably pretty proud of that, all things considered. Everyone and everything he'd nurtured had done all right for themselves, including Gregor, Barrayar, and Sergyar. And Nikki thought, he wasn't doing too badly so far, either.

Nikki picked up his ship and glanced around the bedroom. The man had nurtured Miles from a little broken baby that couldn't have crawled from one end of this tiny bedroom to the other into an Imperial Auditor who helped to raise five kids, and wasn't doing so bad of a job of filling those big shoes. No wonder everybody was so sad. It wasn't a legend they had lost; it was like losing the water that makes things grow. But thankfully, he thought of Miles, his spirit wasn't the type of water that just dried up, but which was passed to others and only made better, purer, stronger, through them. It spilled over them all.

Somebody was lecturing Ivan in the hallway, and the smell of dinner was permeating the house, and life was still moving. Nikki grabbed the vodka, took one last swig, and pulled the door shut.


End file.
